Ethan Hawke is always in development

"If you're going to spend a life in the arts, you need to be infused with a sense of gratitude and a sense of wonder. It's a privilege to do this profession. But there is a payment you have to make for that privilege, which is to do your best all the time. To challenge yourself. That's the luxury tax."

It's a philosophy he says he tries to instill in his children. Hawke has two -- Maya Ray, 11, and Levon Roan, 7 -- with Uma Thurman, whom he met on the set of 1997's "Gattaca"; the couple split in 2004. He has since remarried and had another child.

Hawke certainly has a challenging schedule. In addition to this year's "Moby Dick," next on his plate is directing the off-Broadway revival of Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind," which begins its run Jan. 29. And he continues filming Richard Linklater's "Boyhood," a film being shot over 12 years. "I hesitate to talk about it too much because we still got five or six years before we're done," he said. "But it's a cool thing. I mean, we're improvising a movie over 12 years. You won't have seen anything like it before."